Hey Dell, Where Are Those "Very Cool" Laptops Your Customers Ordered?

We’ve been getting a bunch of very long, very angry complaints about Dell’s inability to deliver the “very cool” laptops they touted in their apology to Consumerist.They laptops were originally supposed to ship on June 26. According to Dell’s website, their current ship date is August 28. Dell’s customers are mad, mad, mad. They got no warning that their computers would take weeks and weeks to ship. We’re also getting reports that Dell is giving customers the run around when they try to cancel.

Dell’s latest post to their blog lays the blame for the delay on their inability to paint the laptops.

The finish on the XPS M1330 is similar to a custom paint job on a car, but with one additional complexity–on a car, typical viewing occurs from several feet away. With a notebook, the typical viewing range is much closer… sometimes a foot or less. This requires a different level of attention to detail. Why do I bring that up? There was no problem painting hundreds at a time. But as we increased the volume, otherwise manageable factors like dust contamination caused our successful yields to decrease. Adding to the complexity, the Crimson Red and the Pearl White colors require more coats of paint and more touches to create the finished product–that means there is more opportunity for dust contamination.

Dell, it was probably a bad idea to take orders on a laptop you haven’t figured out how to build. Apologizing to your customers isn’t enough, they’re almost ready to riot!

You can read a summary of complaints on PC World. Our best recommendation for those who ordered these laptops and were treated so poorly is to cancel your order and keep this experience in mind the next time you go laptop shopping. Dell doesn’t want your business! Take it somewhere else.

For the rest of you, this model laptop is still on sale at Dell’s site. You might want to avoid it.